MARINA GIPPS

Juana's Sestina - Poem by MARINA GIPPS

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October came like a bandit who stoleevery prayer saved in our afternoons of grief, beside her empty bed and crucifixwhere she once joked, holding her Bible, of Christ lighting Judas's ass on fire.They were friends now and she had been invited

to see this, as told in my dream, invitedme, but mother woke me before Death stoleme, almost gone into the sinner's fire.But Grandmother Juana gone this October griefwould have saved me I know with her Biblenear bed, radio sermon and crucifix,

Would have joked of how she snuck the crucifixaway from church friends she hadn't invited, to exchange gossip as they kissed her Bible, the way words caress bloody Death who stoleour every prayer saved in our afternoons of grief, laughing aloud of that dreamy fire,

that brash tail of a kite, high and afire, and hovering above like a crucifix, its childlike frame torn in the wind of grief: how she flew and how we fly, she invitedme above our house one October that stoleour love, investing it into her Bible

that loves no blashphemy for the Bibleadores least those living in the Lake of Fire.October came like a bandit who stoleMami, our Juana, leaving her crucifix, together in a dream where she invitedme to the sky where rain fell hard like grief.

And I awoke secretly with this griefKept like a tomb in my chest for her Bible, our rosaries, yet she wanted me invitedto see Christ lighting Judas's ass on fire, a party where they carry a crucifixevery October for sinners who stole,

including Death, who took her into that fireto burn her small sins before Heaven invited her, that eloquent joker, dead this October.